Avoiding Junk Mail

Welcome to GCU’s Junk Mail Aware page, which explains how GCU is helping reduce junk mail. For our purposes, mail is considered to be junk mail if it is unsolicited or addressed to a recipient that is either unknown or is no longer at GCU.

GCU’s Junk Mail Aware campaign focuses on highlighting constructive ways for reducing the amount of junk delivered to GCU and which can also be applied at home. The campaign’s aim is to reduce the impact that junk mail has on GCU’s operations, particularly in terms of time wasted handling it and associated recycling costs.

Junk Mail At Work:

We suggest these two, complementary approaches for reducing amount of junk mail delivered to GCU:

Ask to be removed from a mailing list: Contact the sender and ask that they remove you from their mailing list.

Use a Return to Sender (RTS) sticker to return any unopened junk mail to the sender. RTS are available from your department’s mail room or the Central Mail Room. Place the sticker over the address, ensuring that the postcode is covered (otherwise Royal Mail will re-deliver it back to us), indicate why you’re returning it and place with other outgoing mail.

Junk Mail at Home:

Households receive a greater range of junk mail and therefore have a greater range of complementary options available to them. To reduce junk mail you receive at home, you should:

Ask to be removed from a mailing list: Contact the sender and ask them to remove you from their mailing list.

Cutting unaddressed mail deliveries: To reduce unaddressed mail (e.g. fliers) write to the Royal Mail and opt-out of their Door to Door deliveries. NB.: The opt-out only lasts for 2 years, so you will need to renew your opt-out. You can find out how to opt-out from Royal Mail’s Door to Door deliveries from here.

Cutting direct (addressed) mail: Register with the Mail Preference Service to reduce the amount of “direct mail” (that’s mail addressed to individuals) at your home address. NB.: You’ll need to register everyone at your address that does not wish to receive direct mail.

Return to the sender: Return to sender by writing “return to sender” on the item, crossing out the address and ideally indicating the reason for returning it to sender. Place all items you wish to return to sender in a post box or hand in at Post Office counter.

Remove your name and address from the [public] electoral register: The edited electoral register is a copy of your local authority’s electoral register, which is publicly available, but has the names and addresses of certain individuals removed (i.e. those that have opted-out). The Information Commissioner’s Office website explains the difference between the two registers [4] and has information about how to opt from the edited electoral register.

The Stop Junk Mail blog has some additional advice for cutting junk mail at home.